The BIG3 wraps up Season 9 the way every good three-on-three summer should end: two teams, one trophy, and a building full of people who showed up expecting buckets. Dallas Power and Boston Ball Hogs meet Saturday at Spectrum Center in Charlotte for the championship, with an All-Star Game kicking things off before tip.
Dallas comes in as the league's best regular-season team at 7-1 and rolled through their semifinal to get here, knocking off defending champ 305 along the way. Boston's path was scrappier — a 5-3 regular season followed by a semifinal win over the Triplets — but a title Saturday would be the franchise's first. Reportedly, Boston's defense has been its soft spot all year, allowing the third-most points of any team in the league, while Dallas has played buttoned-up ball on that end since the opener.
The name to watch is Greg Monroe. The former Pistons lottery pick has quietly had a monster BIG3 season for Dallas, averaging 14.6 points and 9.3 rebounds on 47.9% shooting, and he dropped 18 points on 8-of-18 in Dallas's playoff win. Legion Hoops laid out exactly what's on the line for him: the last five BIG3 Finals MVPs read like a who's-who of the league — Michael Beasley, Gerald Green, Jordan Crawford, Isaiah Briscoe, Jarrett Jack — and Monroe gets his shot to add his name Saturday.
Boston isn't lacking for a counterpunch. Jeremy Pargo led the entire league in scoring at 20.0 points per game to go with 4.8 boards and 3.9 assists, and he led all players in three-pointers made this season. He wasn't sharp shooting the ball in Boston's semifinal win — 6-of-22 from the field — but still found a way to 14 points, which is the kind of stat line that either means he's due for a big night or he's about to have another rough shooting day on the sport's biggest stage.
Dallas has been here before and come up short — the franchise's only title came back in the league's second season in 2018, and they lost the championship game as recently as 2022. That history gives Saturday's matchup an extra layer: it's not just Monroe chasing an MVP trophy, it's a Dallas core trying to shake a reputation for getting to the final and not finishing the job. Boston, meanwhile, has nothing to lose and everything to gain — a first title would instantly validate a season built on outscoring people rather than stopping them.
Tip is set for 1 p.m. ET on CBS, with the trophy — named for Julius Erving — going to whoever survives. Given how the two teams got here, expect Dallas to lean on Monroe controlling the paint while Boston tries to turn it into a track meet behind Pargo. Whoever wins the pace fight probably wins the title.